UGH...constipation.

[jeliphish]

Can anyone offer advice? My 9 month old gets very, very, very constipated. DD1 did too and finally after 6 months of daily miralax, at 3 years old she is finally able to poop.

DD2 began getting constipated with the introduction of solids last month or so. SHE LOVES FOOD. Her diet consists of (as far as breastmilk) breastmilk in the morning from me, expressed 6oz bottles 2-3 times during the work day, and nursing in the evening and throughout the night. As far as solids are concerned, she eats blueberries, pears, avacado, peaches, peas, greenbeans, cooked carrots, cranberries, raisins. These are all real foods, not purees, and she gets small servings maybe 2x per day. The MOMENT I began solids her normal poop stopped. She was for all purposes ready, gut seemed ready because she had her teeth (La Leche League info), she crammed our food in her mouth whenever she was sitting close enough to a plate, she was over 7 months, etc. etc. Then 4, 5, 6....days would pass without a poop and she wouldn't sleep, cried all the time, and finally would pass like a fist sized poop ball and scream like someone was murdering her.

It's like her colon can't process it right and I don't know what to do. Upon pedi recommendation (and he didn't want for it to come to this either) we are doing a 2 week course of mirlax. It has been 4 days and she is still passing hard, round balls and screaming. I did an enema once the night before we started the miralax and she passes like 1/3 cup full of hard poop and then 5 minutes later passed about 1/4 cup of mushy poop. I may do another one tonight, but I get nervous doing them like they are dangerous or something but it seems as if we need to "uncork" her yet again.

What else can I do? She is eating nothing but fiberous food and BM. She screams for solids but then screams about what they do to her. SHe is having no other allergy symptom and exhibits no other behaviors that indicates why this is occuring.

HELP!!!

TIA!

[CassnBeth]

I have nothing in the way of useful advice on this but I will be watching this thread very closely because we are in much the same boat. I know plenty of people will say to just stop offering solid food but, not only have we tried that for a week to no avail, I just don't think it is normal for a seven and a half month old to be so disastrously unable to process a few daily ounces of fibrous food. I just have no idea what to do with this since the miralax isn't really working either.

[jeliphish]

CassnBeth, how long have you been using miralax? what are your baby's stools like?

[MamaPhD]

constipation is so hard - pun intended! watching baby struggle with it is even harder!

carrots are actually constipating. anything startchy. all other foods seem fine. My DD went through something similar. When we started solids, she pooped 7-8x per day (she ALWAYS pooped 1x day until then), which freaked me out, and then pooped 1x week, which then also freaked me out. I think it is more about the baby's digestive system getting "shocked" by non breastmilk food, rather than the foods are constipating. What we did was to go off solids for a week or so and just ebf then resume solids again. We did that twice.

also another thing you can try is warm prune juice. dilute it by 1/2 with water. this works like magic almost always same day for us. 1-2x per day, a few ounces or whatever baby will drink. it's sweet so they willgo for it.

Our ped also said that babies don't really have ab muscles to speak of, so it is hard to push poop out in general. once they start solids, that is another thing they have to learn, too. other than that, I would say keep trying with diet (loosening food, no solids, meds) rather than enema, since you don't want to get in the habit of doing that each time.

good luck!!!

[CassnBeth]

Well, we're on day twelve of a two week course of miralax with DD getting a heaping half teaspoon each day mixed into five ounces of expressed breastmilk. The first five days we had no results at all which brought DD to a total of ten poopless days before a large hard claylike poop. Then we got two days of normal, soft, daily pooping when I made the foolish error of offering DD pears instead of prunes and the whole thing ground to a standstill again. There was a small pooping this morning but nowhere near enough for three days worth of digestion.

My wife has undiagnosed digestive issues in spades too and we are suspicious of the possibility a dairy intolerance in DD but she certainly doesn't have the classic blood-in-poop-screaming-all-the-time-covered-in-eczema symptoms. I let her have a tablespoon of cow's milk yogurt exactly once and she turned up with dark circles under her eyes and her sleep came unglued for a few days. That was it. I can't tell if the dairy caused anything or if I am insane and looking for an explanation.

How much miralax is your little one taking? And how much liquid does she get with it? Did they ever figure out what caused this for your older daughter? (love their names BTW!)

[BRmama]

jeliphish and CassnBeth- First of all so sorry you're both going through this. It's gotta be the hardest thing seeing our lo suffer. Btdt I can offer some advice with what I do with my son that works.

He was going through the exact same thing as your dd and as he passed poop his colon was huge and he got a few fissures as a result.

When I took him to my ped he (my ped) suggested this: That I feed him all fruits that start with the letter "p." So like prunes, pears, plums, peaches...etc. I also do miralax. I give him two teaspoons (per direction of the ped) and half of a chewable pedialax tablet. The pedialax I do twice a day and the miralax at every feeding. I've since cut back on the pedialax to once a day. Also when I notice that his poop is really hard I'll put half of a baby glycerin suppository (sorry if it's mispelled) and usually within a half hour that uncorks him so to speak and it makes it soft. I also do infant probiotic twice a day and that seems to be helping. For his fissures I just do aquaphor (again recommended by my ped). He also told me to stay away from banannas, and anything starchy like potatoes and rice, and I offer him plenty of liquids too since water helps to move things along. Oh and a friend of mine suggested I try flax meal and that's been helping too.

Anyway I hope all of this helps. Also unfortunately my son is not bf anymore, but knowing that the formula was doing this we switched him to goat's milk. I may be over doing it but when I saw my baby's colon that size and him crying bloody murder that was it for me. Never again has he had it that size.

[jeliphish]

Originally Posted by CassnBeth

How much miralax is your little one taking? And how much liquid does she get with it? Did they ever figure out what caused this for your older daughter? (love their names BTW!)

Thanks!

hmmm- Maggie is taking 1/4 of a cap full in about 5oz of breastmilk. Our pedi originally told us that it had to be dissolved in a "clear liquid" but she will NOT drink anything other than BM...so I just made the executive decision to use the BM. They never figured out why DD1 had issues. I suspect allergies with her and will be scheduling an appt with a pediatric allergist here soon. Maggie just exhibits no signs of allergies so I am more confused about her.

[bender]

Are you giving the baby water with meals? A book I read about introducing solids mentioned the importance of starting water when you start solids.

[annekh23]

Originally Posted by jeliphish

DD2 began getting constipated with the introduction of solids last month or so. SHE LOVES FOOD. Her diet consists of (as far as breastmilk) breastmilk in the morning from me, expressed 6oz bottles 2-3 times during the work day, and nursing in the evening and throughout the night. As far as solids are concerned, she eats blueberries, pears, avacado, peaches, peas, greenbeans, cooked carrots, cranberries, raisins.

There are still lots of things to try. Is that a complete list of foods that she gets? I know you haven't mentioned them, but you need to be sure to avoid apples/applesauce and bananas and from the list you've given, I'd cut out carrots, and also cranberries and raisins, because they don't have liquid along with the fibre, avocado and blueberries are also not on the optimum list.

Foods you could try in addition include apricot, prune, spinach.

You say she won't drink anything but breastmilk, it won't be a short term solution, as you'll have to work on it, but she is going to need to work on that. You can try plain water or diluted apple, grape or prune juice, about 1oz with each meal is the aim. You can use an open cup, with or without handles, with lots of parental guidance! Or a cup with a spout that doesn't involve sucking, look for something that has a slow leak if you knock it over, the semi disposable ones you can get in Target can be made to do this by taking a sharp knife and very carefully turning the holes into a slit. I eventually found some by "The first years" in a smaller drug store.

Other tricks are tummy massage, bicycle legs and warm baths.

My final suggestion is for you to check your own diet, if you aren't drinking enough water, then your BM is probably less watery. We're moving more into old wives tales rather than more reliable info here, but an older lady told me to drink orange juice if my baby was slow to go and it did seem to help! Another thing to consider is iron and vit D, low iron means low oxygen supply to the muscles in the gut, but ironically iron supplementation often causes constipation, but it's definitely worth considering your own levels and how to increase them, vit D shouldn't be a problem unless it is so low as to cause rickets, but no harm from making sure you have enough!

[CassnBeth]

But...are people actually giving their babies two or three ounces of juice a day for weeks? That would replace an awful lot of breastmilk for my kid.

[BRmama]

Originally Posted by CassnBeth

But...are people actually giving their babies two or three ounces of juice a day for weeks? That would replace an awful lot of breastmilk for my kid.

I do, I dilute his juice with water, he also gets plenty of goat's milk as well. I do pear and prune juice. He also eats a lot which makes him very constipated. Unfortunately I don't bf my ds anymore. Though I'd think in your case bm would do great as well since obviously it's liquid and any liquid helps to get things moving. I agree with a pp to check your diet too. The thing with certain juices is that it also helps to losen and soften the stools so it doesn't hurt as much. Also I'd consider trying it out slowly in conjunction with bf and seeing how your lo does with juice. Good luck

[Miasmamma]

DD2 was horribly constipated when she started solids. I tried just prunes and those kinda worked, but she wants food she can hold. I tried 3 different types of cups and various dilutions of apple and prune juice with no luck. The suppositories must have burned b/c she would scream from the moment they went in to the moment she went. So I did what I wasn't going to do. I bought a small Playtex Drop-In nurser. Worked like a charm. She will drink what ever I put in it. She likes it b/c she doesn't have to tip it up like a sippy cup, she can use it like the breast.